


Late, but not quite

by PersieDaae



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Author Is Sleep Deprived, Ben Solo Lives, Ben needs a beating, Confused Kylo Ren, F/M, Finn is obtuse, Han Solo Lives, Kinda, Kylo Ren Redemption, Rey Needs A Hug, Reylo - Freeform, Rose will beat your ass into redemption, This is experimental, Time Travel Fix-It, Touch Starved Rey, Touch-Starved, but is it really, idk folks, ops that's a spoiler, slow burn i guess, tagging for virgin bitches because I enjoy suffering
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:20:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22976038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PersieDaae/pseuds/PersieDaae
Summary: Synopsis:Rey is trying to travel to the World Between Worlds, but time travels instead. When Rey finds herself back with Han and Chewie in Takodana, running away from the First Order advance, she realizes this is a ride she might have come unprepared for.xxThis is not a one-shot.As I added on the tags, this is a little bit of experimental writing. It's more based on feelings than plot? Idk. Let us see where it takes me.Reminder: I don't have a beta other than myself, and I am not a native english-speaker.
Relationships: Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 11
Kudos: 63





	1. Chapter 1

**“** Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.”

Stephen King,  _ The Green Mile _

*

She’s ready. Buckled up and ready. 

She’s asked Rose to check up the ship at least twice, and  _ it’s fine _ , but she can’t help it but check it herself. 

And everything _ is  _ fine.

Finn was right, she had too much caf.

Not that Finn actually knew what she was off to do, but Rey had a feeling he was suspicious. She appreciates that he’s not mad about her hiding stuff from him - it’s not out of spite, really. She only wishes for a quiet departure. 

Rose knows a bit about her motivations.

Chewie doesn’t. 

Oh, how Rey wanted to tell him that she was bringing Ben back, that he’s really,  _ truly  _ changed, that she’ll give him another chance to live as a free man. 

All he knows is that she’s off to a dangerous, perilous mission, and that she can’t afford to bring anyone with her to face such dangers. Chewie, of course, had faced his own bits of mortal dangers and insisted that he’d come with her, but Rey was not back down by any means. He only relented when she told him that it was something she had to do by herself, as a Jedi. Well, you know, like a  _ liar _ .

Rey was no Jedi. She’s  _ never  _ been.

But none of this really matters at this point in time - she is a woman with a mission, like a glorious knight in silver armor ready to rescue his sweetheart from a dragon; so, she marches. 

(Rey has no idea what a dragon is, it seems Ben liked to read those weird stories a lot as a child).

(Not like she went through his stuff or anything. Right.)

The farewell is not hushed, but she feels it pass like rapid water through her fingers. One moment Rose is warning her about what the Resistance might do if she does succeed on her task, and the next she’s hugging her goodbyes. Rose is encouraging, Finn makes her emotional, Chewie almost crushes bone - but she doesn’t see Poe around when she goes up the ramp.

It matters not.

The Falcon is ready to fly. 

She takes a shaky breath before checking the small cloth bag she’s bringing along. 

Victuals? Check.

The Jedi texts? Check.

Her annotations? Check.

Her dual saber? Check.

Ben’s sweater? Check. But she’s wearing that.

Looking at her route for the billionth time, her eyes always stop at her ultimate destiny.  _ Lothal _ . Ready or not, here she comes.

Leaving the planet is an exhilarating experience. Well, caf certainly has a role in it, but Rey chooses to believe it’s only her emotions. The Force. A good omen.

Space is really empty, though. And cold. And lonely.

There’s only machines to keep her company now, and at times like these - when Rose is not around to talk or Finn isn’t by her side bickering - she remembers. 

She’s only one half now. 

A humming leaves her throat for no one to hear it, as Rey comes to the realization that this might be why she’s been so off since Ben… Vanished. _ He’s  _ **_not_ ** _ dead _ , she tells herself, and even if he is,  _ I’ll resurrect him _ .

This is the only thing keeping her together at this point. 

She couldn’t cry when he disappeared into thin air, not having neither time nor tears to do it; she had to escape by herself, because no one came to rescue her. Maybe they had her for dead at this point. Which is fine, really; it’s not like Rey has the capacity to feel enraged or betrayed.

She can barely  _ feel  _ at all.

When she came back to the base, that’s how she felt. Empty. Light-headed. Like she was floating in a parallel universe no one had noticed yet, and a dimension which prevented her from keeping her feet on the ground. 

She knew people could go blind, deaf, or even lose the capacity to smell and taste or the sense of touch; she never met anyone who lost the capacity to feel in a broad sense of the word. 

It’s like she also lost sense of time; everything passes so quickly that she has barely been able to register hours, days or weeks. 

She supposes she’s been planning the trip for six months. Roughly.

But when she arrives in Lothal, on the old Jedi temple, there will be no time for errors. 

It’s succeed or succeed.

Xx

It’s a pretty green planet, she supposes. Maybe Ben would have liked that.

_ Maybe he will. _

The landing isn’t perfect, but is good enough so that nothing is damaged; the site she chose to do it didn’t help much either. It was rather rock than grass, and it was important to keep the ship hidden if they needed to go back to civilization.  _ If _ . 

Because Rey _ is  _ rescuing Ben, and if he so decides he never wants to associate with galactic politics again, she’d stay with him. She’d do  _ anything _ . 

“Be right back, girl.” She taps the ship in a hesitant goodbye, then covering it with a good chunk of sailcloth she brought along. It takes a bit longer because even with the use of the Force, she’s only one girl and the Falcon is one big  _ piece of junk _ . The thought makes her smile, or something like that. Her lips tremble, for sure; still she has no idea if they form a smile or a snarl. She breathes heavily, then, leaving the ship alone. That was tiring. But she still has a journey on foot awaiting. 

The big monolith ahead is her prize. 

Her heart throbs.

_ I’m coming, Ben _ . 

Xx

It’s night. She’s having trouble seeing anything.

The winds are merciless, too; even though the climate is mild, Rey was forged on a desert, only walking outside by the light of the sun. Nights were too dangerous even for seasoned adventurers.

So she trembles, but marches ahead. Ben’s sweater does help, and she did put a cowl over just for extra precaution -  _ but it’s still too fucking cold _ . Maybe she should have brought thicker gloves? Rey huffs, trying to swear out loud but lacking the energy to do so. She has to focus on her feet and her surroundings; she can’t afford to trip or to be attacked. She doesn’t really know what is ahead, and she fears it will be something bigger than anything she faced. Something ugly churns in her chest.

_ Anxiety. Fear _ . 

Rey is trembling of cold no more. Something much dreadful sweeps in her bones. 

_ She. Won't. Fail.  _

_ Not now _ . 

Rey grits her teeth, and braves on. 

_ Almost there _ .

The ominous site lies ahead, almost close enough to reach. She runs, forgetting all care about injuries or threats, runs like her lungs need it, runs like a deer chased by a wolf, or a wolf chasing a deer, and then -

_ She’s there _ .  _ She did it _ .

Her lungs burn. Her brows knit.  _ Where’s the entrance? _

Her eyes become urgent, and she lights a glowrod to better seek what she needs. Rock, rock, and even more rocks - it’s like an avalanche happened. Except this wasn’t a mountain. It was manufactured by beings, and it collapsed by the same. All blood disappears from her face. 

But there is still supposed to have an entrance.  _ Right? _

She blinks wildly, trying to calm her breathing; meditation is completely off the table, but she does some exercises as she evaluates where the architecture is supposed to be. There’s no time to waste, she has to find it. She has to find it  _ now _ .

More glowrods are lit, and they’re positioned in places one could deem strategic, but at this point is just random. Rey removes her cowl, then breathes a few more times.

Time to scavenge. 

She begins in no particular order, but prioritizes removing the smaller rocks first. It’s a boring and perilous job, but she’s used to it; her hands are rough and her mind is sharp. She can do it. She  _ will  _ do it.

The sound of rocks hitting rock is coarse and loud, but Rey can barely hear it. Her heart is louder.

_ Clink. Clank _ .

It echoes solo in the chilly air, but there’s no one to hear it.

Xx

It’s morning. 

Rey hasn't noticed.

Her fists are bloody and numb and she’d been able to sweat on the cold, but there’s a hole now. Force help her, there’s an  _ entrance _ . 

She needs a few seconds to sit and recover; her head is aching badly, she doesn’t feel her legs, and she’s past worrying about her fingernails now.

(She lost two.)

But there’s an entrance. 

She laughs. 

It’s an ugly, distorted sound and her throat  _ hurts  _ on the process, but  _ everything  _ hurts, so it doesn’t matter. There’s an entrance and as soon as her bloody legs can move, she’ll enter. Even if she has to crawl.

A little voice in her head reminds her she has to drink, that she has to eat; Rey thinks she’s been awake for over 20 hours, but it could be more. She feeds her body mindlessly, wondering how much more time she’ll have to wait until her goal. Her  _ final  _ goal.

_ I’m coming, Ben _ .

Her brain screams when she does get up, migraine still high and nigh, showing no signs of slowing down; but Rey forces her feet to  _ move _ , and it hurts - but she’s past the pain now. There’s only dark.

She doesn’t light a glow rod, then. 

_ The Force will guide her _ .

It’s faint, but it’s there - a low, cold softness guiding her ahead, like wet silk sheets that go down and down, right to the beast’s stomach.

(Maybe she’s been reading Ben’s novels a little too much.)

Other than tripping, her journey is safe enough - even if she can’t see a centimeter ahead of her eyes. It’s oppressive, how dark it is, but the young maiden braves ahead. Because the Force starts humming louder and louder the deeper she goes, so much that it resembles a song. It’s neither human, nor alien song - it’s music like music wind chants, made by nature,  _ made by everything _ . 

It makes her think of something she read somewhere once.

_ Your soul is a chosen landscape _

_ Where charming masquerades and dancers are promenading, _

_ Playing the lute and dancing, and almost _

_ Sad beneath their fantastic disguises. _

_ While singing in a minor key _

_ Of victorious love, and the pleasant life _

_ They seem not to believe in their own happiness _

_ And their song blends with the moonlight, _

_ With the sad and beautiful moonlight, _

_ Which sets the birds in the trees dreaming, _

_ And makes the fountains sob with ecstasy, _

_ The slender water streams among the marble statues _

She follows it, thoughtless - hoping to find what her heart aches for. 

Xx

Time flows like a second, like hours, like a day or a decade - there’s no telling. But it ages Rey in a way she wouldn’t be able to put into words; she’s a child and a crone, a woman and a girl. 

She’s everything, and she’s nothing, until the light hits her face. 

She screams, blinded. Scared. She forgot what it looked like. She forgot what she was doing. She forgot who she was.

Rey blinks, trying to breathe. 

_ Rey. _

It’s not her voice, but it echoes in her mind. __

_ Rey _

Oh. That’s her name.

_ Your mission.  _

Ben _.  _ Ben, she came here for Ben, she’d crossed oceans of space for it;

_ You’ll save him. _

She will.

Her eyes pop open again, but this time it’s still dark. Although, she feels this time around that she reached the destination; the Force stops flowing like a current on the sea, now spreading it’s tendrils like water on a lake. 

An ancient, deep, still lake. 

She’s surprised by her own sneezing, but quickly rubs her nose on her wrist.  _ Old _ , indeed; there’s too much dust around. The grey user gets up, getting a few more glowrods from her purse to crack and to see what she must. 

Just like on the entrance at the surface, it seems like a lot of rocks fell down from the original structure. It’s not collapsed enough that she can’t make a few interesting highlights on the wall, but it ain’t a very good state either; she’ll have to climb a few loose rocks to get closer to what seems to be the main wall. 

It sure be there where she finds the paintings. 

Except there’s no trace of paint or color when she comes close to it. Her blood stops running. 

No.  _ No _ , they should be there, the walls are intact, positioned as the writings foretold,  _ no _ . But they aren’t, there’s no trace of  _ anything  _ left. The stone is cold and empty, just as she feels inside. Damp, she realizes, but this part is not about the wall. She’s crying. 

Sobbing, would be more accurate, but while her body weeps she feels  _ nothing _ . It’s like her body is there, but her soul just left; she could see the light from the light rod trembling because  _ she  _ is trembling; she could feel the ground swirling around her like quicksand, and how her knees hurt when they suddenly hit the ground. She stays like that for a while - trying to breath out of a survivalist instinct, rather than rational thought - but it’s like her mind broke and she can’t even feel the sense of self anymore. 

The Universe, Force, or whatever the shit it was -  _ it  _ finally broke her. Gave her hope only to destroy her from within. She would have laughed, if she could, but everything was to numb for Rey to find humor on the utter sadistic pleasure  _ it  _ took from her situation. 

Because it would be more pleasant than the thought that she didn’t matter. That nothing mattered. That she was, indeed,  _ nothing _ .

She sobs vehemently, remembering kind words that she mistook for arrogance, words that were raw but real, truthful. He never lied to her, he never let her down. Oh, the pleasure she would have now to take his hand.  _ Kylo’s  _ hand. She sees now that he and Ben were the same, just like the stars are in the sky whether you see them or not. He’s always been there for her, since the moment they first connected, but now she has failed him. Again. 

Something bubbles up her chest, then; it’s unpleasant, cold and dark and all consuming, but it makes her come back to herself. 

_ Anger _ .

Anger at being so emotionally volatile, anger at being bad at expressing herself, anger at being useless; she’s furious that all of this could be prevented had she taken better steps towards her dyad, her love, her soulmate. He was no saint, but she also helped him dig the hole they were both in now; He, dead. She, lifeless. 

She can’t feel her face anymore at this point, but she can feel pain on her knees, on her fingers, where she bleeds. She blinks at it, one hand still holding on to the glowrod from before. She sees red staining the stick. Stain. Paint. What’s the real difference?

A wild thought flashes on her mind and her annotations are out before she can think twice. Ire helps her focus, but it also makes her hands unstable and stiff. Her eyes madly scurry through the drawings, and she wastes no time in trying to mimic the paper traces on stone; it hurts, but not enough. She smiles roughly as she successfully leaves a red imprint behind her fingertips, both from her already ruined digits and from the scraping on her knees. Her work is by no means artistic, but it helps her  _ connect _ . 

The Force hums alive, making the red glow by no other light than out of the makeshift ink. She laughs, hard and parched, continuing her mad plan with more enthusiasm than she ever felt since Ben was taken from her. 

Soon she has successfully painted a triangle, and a circle goes inside. She’s  _ almost  _ finishing it when she hears a growl. She freezes - but there’s no beast nor animal with her there. She stretches and stretches the reach of her senses, but there’s nothing beside or  _ behind  _ her. Her eyes go back to the wall and six golden wolves suddenly appear, holding her frightened stare with a quizzical one. 

_ Who are you _ , they ask, voiceless,  _ and what do you seek? _

_I’m Rey_ , she feels, rather than thinks, _I’m Rey and I seek Ben. I seek my dyad._ _I’m broken and I seek mending_.

The wolves stare at her like they heard it. Rey thinks she’s past delirious now. 

_ You seek balance _ , they answer, and she nods dumbly. _ So you may enter _ . 

They start howling, loud and haunting, making the woman shudder with loneliness; she feels it, then, like a limb was tore out of her and she felt it’s ghost aching. It’s the wound left to where Ben once was. There’s no longer air to breathe, but there’s something happening at the wall. 

The wolves form a circle where her drawing was, running and singing until rock becomes nothing. Rey wheezes, breathing like her diaphragm weighed a ton, but it won’t stop her. 

Nothing stops her when she deliberately jumps into nothingness, only one thing on her mind; Ben.

She must find him.  _ She will _ .


	2. The Destination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm back. Not great, not better, but scavenging for a good spot on the sunlight.

She wakes up to the sound of explosions. It takes one minute or two for her to actually identify that all that banging, sharp noises aren’t from the Resistance’s fuck up in recovering an Imperial ship. It takes an insane amount of debris to fall into her ears, mouth and eyes for her to realize that she’s awake. She heaves a sharp breath and coughs up dust as her body automatically rolls away from another wave of fragments, caused most probably out of a Storm Trooper’s atrocious aim. Her eyes blink open as confusion and awe set in, and for a moment she thinks she’s dead and this is something similar to a purgatory. Rey coughs again as she tries to focus on the scenery, and is aghast to notice how familiar it is. It’s rocky, but it’s neither the Temple nor Exogol; it’s a battlefield, but it’s not any of the most recent she’s been at. The cold Takodanian air hits her lungs just as hard as a realization of when and where she is. She hears Han’s voice in the distance, screaming something to Chewie that she just can’t make sense of - but is swiftly answered by the Wookie, nonetheless. She thinks a wild form swinging a kriffing lightsaber around like a mosquito racket is Finn. Oh boy. Oh, oh yeah, that’s _definitely_ him. She blinks, shaking her head in disbelief. He’s really bad at it. Rey crawls away from the battle without her meaning to, and one hand finds itself touching a tree’s roots.

She pauses, and then looks down. On her other hand, there’s a blaster. She frowns, touching her clothes only to find they were not of a faded desert-dirty white color, but black. Her hands are still ruined, her eyes are still heavy and itching - red and bloated, no doubt - and her head still aches from emotional drought and lack of sleep. But the wound, the gaping wound - it’s gone. There’s nothing there but an empty ache. She’s trembling as she puts two and two together.

  
She’s- She's in the past?

  
Her head whips around the forest, causing her a harsh dizziness, but Rey doesn’t care. She’s in the past. A little too far back, but she is in the past. A past where she still was fleeing away from it all, a past where she didn’t have friends; a past that has Han alive and shouting and shooting. A past where Ben’s alive.

 _Ben_.

She must find him. _Now_.

The thought is much more urgent than her body, who struggles to get her up and moving. Her knees are no longer bleeding, but still a mess; there’s now more than two fingernails missing, and Rey would probably take a few days to get her digitals back. Her system claims for food and rest, but nothing is more urgent than finding Ben. She gets on her feet and forces herself to run. It's not really a run, no; she’s more power-stubling than anything else. Ben’s lightsaber is heavy on her belt; hers is resting inside the cowl that she made no move to get rid of. All of it is uncomfortable, but much more bearable than the rest of the aching all around her body - and none of it is bad enough to stop her from braving ahead.

But a burst of red particle beam energy almost does.

Kriffing Storm Troopers. Her anger flares when they aim at her again, but she deflects the next laser with arduous effort; the Force makes it hit a tree or a rock. She isn’t looking. All she sees is an infuriating obstacle to her goal. A goal she’s just so close to getting. She can almost taste it.

The trooper goes flying back before she resumes her pacing. BB8 isn’t running ahead of her this time, she notes; maybe it escaped when she was out of it, lying on the ground. Who knows. While part of her hopes it wasn’t captured, another isn’t giving much shit about it. She can rescue it later, after she finds Ben. It takes much longer than she expected. Where in the galaxy was the man? He is supposed to be going after her, after all. She swears on her mother tits that if he got any funny ideas with Han or anyone else on this timeline… She is going to do something. What _exactly_ , her bad oxygenated brain is not very keen to provide, but... It will probably involve some fighting, and then a lecture, and then a kiss.

She really hopes it can be in that _exact_ order. Because Force only knows what she- She...  
  
 _Oh_.

When a very familiar, powerful presence makes itself known, Rey can’t help but to fall on her knees.

 _He’s there_.

She doesn’t need to turn around to know it’s him, but she does anyway. Rey is once again breathless, but this time for a _very_ different reason. Sheer, untainted happiness. His form is as dark and as imposing as she remembers it; he looks taller, but thinner. His shoulders are just as wide, but her memory feeds her a bigger Kylo, one that basically looked like a brick wall rather than a... Well, her brain still isn’t 100%, so she can’t come up with anything remotely brilliant. The mask - it _is_ there, as it _should be_ , but it doesn’t stop her heart from aching a little at its presence. She... She really misses his eyes.

From his part - lightsaber is out, but he is not charging.

That makes her head to cock slightly, her brows knitting for a second. He... He could have reached her by now, and she is quite dumbfounded as to the reason to _why_ he’s not. Rey stares and stares at the helmet, partly wishing it away, partly... Curious. She vividly remembers shooting at him when he just appeared like that, the last time; yet, she wasn’t aware... That... That he never really raised the saber at her? Oh wow. Way to go, past Rey.   
  
Maybe he was at that time as curious as she is now. This Kylo, on the other hand, is clearly hesitant. Rey really wants to laugh - he was clearly expecting her to run, to hunt her, or at the very least to feel a minimal hint of... Fear? But _this_ Rey just can’t put into words the amount of relief she feels now. Force, she really, _really_ wants to see his face now… But she doesn’t project that though.

That... That would’ve scared him off for good.

She has to get on a ship with him, no matter the conditions she’ll be under. But... It is nice. Looking at him. And, and- It's a good thing he’s not Force-trapping her this time, right?   
  
  
When he takes a step ahead, her heart _sings_. Slowly but... Surely - oh dear Force, look at his _shoulders_ \- he’s coming closer. And oh, what she would give to touch him.

This triggers memories from events - those from her timeline, which pass disorderly on her mind, flashing up as quickly as they fade. Her heart beats so loud on her chest that she is sure he can hear it just as clearly as she can. Her eyes never leave the mask, even when his boots are inches away from where she’s kneeling. Rey wonders if he’s working his jaw. She always found it strangely charming, and this thought sends a whole new wave of emotions through her body; she shivers, then.

  
Not from euphoria or... Anything good, really. This her body reminding her how _kriffing_ long she’s been past bedtime. 

_Shit_.  
  
Her vision becomes blurry and Rey struggles to stay awake; but her traitorous body has absolutely no intent to stay awake for a second longer. The last thing she remembers is attempting to reach out a hand to him - then all is dark.   
  
  
Xx   
  
  
Kylo was supposed to find either a girl or a droid.   
  
A _map_ , more specifically, but there was no physical evidence of it if not by the hand of a human or a robot. A strong part of him wishes he had found the non-humanoid first.   
  
Because the young woman who rests on his arms now, cuddling to his chest - she looks like a whole lot of trouble.   
  
  
He really could have spared himself of the trouble of carrying her bridal-style all the way back to the ship - but she had looked at him in such a manner that he _could not_ , despite all his years of training on the dark arts, let her be carried by lesser hands than _his_. In fact, even his hands don’t feel proper enough to do the job. It was such an outlandish show of chivalry that it would be certainly frowned upon by his master. However, what his master doesn’t know won’t come back around to bite him.   
  
Kylo Ren would _not_ let it show.   
  
His soldiers, even less; if not by the means of interrogation, they would not utter a word about how long he walked with her in his arms, why he did it, or how breathless he was at exercising the task. They’re all _smartly_ silent, not muttering a word to each other that wasn’t about landing the transport on the mother-ship.   
  
Kylo maintains the lady on his lap.   
  
Kylo is not thinking about improper things.   
  
Instead, he worries about other things.   
  
Perhaps that one part of him that knows that _she_ is unconscious, as her exhaustion is just as clear as a midday sun. It was intense enough he is still surprised she had walked that far.   
  
Not far away _enough_ from Kylo Ren, unfortunately.  
  
But it doesn’t explain why her hand is clutching his vest, or why her head is resting peacefully on his shoulder, like… Like they weren’t at odds at war. Like they weren’t enemies. Part of him suspects they’re not only that, but another is alarmed at what else they could be. She whimpers faintly when he adjusts her to get up and it’s…

A _moment_.

His brain short circuits and it takes a few seconds for him to climb down the ramp.   
  
_Yes. Whatever._  
  
Even so, _she_ goes back to bury her head at _his_ chest again.   
  
Kylo does not like how easily it makes his heart somersault.   
  
  
If he’s walking a tad too fast or cursing lowly as he power walks through the ship, no one says anything. But he knows they know. He feels a mix of emotions he can’t really put a finger on, but one of them is clearly ‘shame’.   
  
_Or so he thinks_.   
  
His feet hesitate on the route he must take as soon as he hits the main corridor. He disperses the troops as soon as he gets there, so... No more peeping toms.

They are _all alone_ now.

Kylo huffs, a little out of effort - he really could have put her on a droid unit or something, but letting go of her felt so immediately _wrong_ that he would rather deal with his sore arms than with the distance. Which... Is not at all an alarming thought. At all. _Nope_.   
  
Still, the commander chooses to worry about her instead; besides the exhaustion, he could see how hurt she was. Her pants had been brownish red at knee-height, and wounds of all types were easily found on her hands, face and arms. It looked like she had rolled down a rocky hill with her whole body, rather than being on a run in a place that was mostly... Forest, honestly. But by the Force, he could even feel _through_ his gloves the remaining fragments of rock on her arms. And if this wasn’t strange enough already, the girl looked much more like a starved slave than a Resistance soldier.   
  
Head full, thoughts plenty, he chooses the direction of the medical bay before he can stop himself. He can’t stop thinking about her eyes even as he lay her - _carefully_ \- on a nursing bed.   
  
His helmet, unfortunately, forbids him from discerning colors; his vision has been, up until now, only a detailed grayscale (at best). But... Even if he knew not the exact color of her eyes - not too _dark_ , not too _light -_ the little pair of them left an imprint on his brain.   
  
Her hair, on the other hand, was either dark ginger or brown, this he was sure. He dares not take his mask off to verify it here and there. Not now, at least. He focuses, instead, on her wounds as they’re treated by a state-of-art medical droid; it cleans her skin before doing any actual work, which makes him both glad and... Shocked. _Glad_ , because it meant he could trust the droid, but _shocked_ \- or better yet, _revolted_ \- at the actual state of the damage. She... She has at least _four?_ Fingernails (!) _missing_???   
  
_Dear Force_. What a poor, poor state of a newly awakened. Kylo is not one to ever feel _pity_ , but there's definitively a ever so present ache on his heartstrings when he looks at her hands. Most of the nails were missing from her right hand; the same hand presented raw, deep wounds, which concentrated mostly on her fingers. It looks like she had no digitals to show at the moment.   
  
It's honestly rather baffling.  
  
Her kneecaps and elbows were almost as bad as her hands, yet only by little. The skin there was obviously open, but _thankfully_ not enough to cut bone. Still, all of it makes him feel incredibly nauseated. If her Force signature was anything to go by, she should be competent enough to prevent such injuries from happening. But... But then again, when he came upon her, she looked like there was only a tiny thread holding her together. Like... Like the last string connecting two parts of a shirt.   
  
Like she had been only half of her full capacity.   
  
Like she was _missing_ a part of herself.   
  
And then... And then she looked at him like he was just the thing she needed. The _only_ thing she ever needed.  
  


No one has ever looked with eyes so... Hopeful. _Adoring_ , even- Not on a long time.

  
Kylo swallows tightly, then shakes his head. Why is he thinking such strange, senseless thoughts? His training should have prevented him from doing so. She was just a key to a map. She _should_ be. He reasons to stay there through the whole treatment because he could not trust anyone else to watch her. Whether he is guarding her from others or others from her, it’s an unclear answer.   
  
But the Force compels him to stay, for one reason or another, and he obeys it.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: I’m sorry. It wasn’t supposed to be so angsty at the beginning, but I felt like venting all my anger and sadness from TROS into an electronic piece of paper, so… Yeah. That’s the product.  
> I do promise that things will lighten up from now on, though… At least on some level. lol  
> Ps.: The temple was destroyed back in Rebels, so that’s my motivation for the extra angst. The Force is still there, but since the temple collapsed, it became an unorganized mess. It takes a very strong emotion - love, sadness, anger and passion - for it to finally concentrate and go back to its original functionality. And only the dark side can provide something this intense. :)  
> It’s like the universe wants her blood, sweat and tears for her to have her happy ending, so she’ll give it. That’s how fucking much she loves her dark prince.


End file.
